If you think heavily armed white supremacists are some kind of new threat to America, you should take a look at The Order , a gripping, superbly made historical thriller about a neo-Nazi gang that terrorized the Pacific Northwest nearly four decades ago, robbing banks and armored cars to fund their plans for a full-scale insurrection.
Why Director Jon Watts Turned His Back on Marvel to Make 'Wolfs' With Brad Pitt and George Clooney
A nail-biter from start to finish, Australian director Justin Kurzel’s bleak and brawny true story stars Jude Law as an FBI agent trying to take down the film’s titular faction, which he tracks over several years, from one hold-up and killing to the next. Backed by a stellar cast that includes Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan and Jurnee Smollett, The Order is the kind of tense reflection on American violence that Hollywood rarely puts on the big screen anymore. After launching in Venice’s main competition, it will hopefully find supporters stateside, with Law’s meaty lead turn a strong selling point.
As one of the more promising filmmakers to emerge from Australia over the past few decades, Kurzel is no stranger to depicting real-life violence on screen. His 2011 debut, The Snowtown Murders , told the grim and gruesome story of an infamous Aussie serial killer. And his Cannes-award winning 2021 drama, Nitram , depicted the events leading up to a massacre in Tasmania in 1996. Even Kurzel’s rather botched 2015 take on Macbeth was filled with more bloodletting than your average Shakespeare flick.
He was thus the perfect candidate to direct this violent and true American crime story, which screenwriter Zach Baylin ( King Richard ) adapted from Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s 1989 nonfiction book, The Silent Brotherhood. Sticking to events as much as possible while revisiting The Order’s crime spree throughout the early 1980s, the admirably detailed script also sketches out a trio of compelling main characters.
On the law side there’s Terry Husk (Law), an obsessive if burnt-out Bureau man who already fought both the KKK and the Cosa Nostra. Arriving at an empty FBI office with nothing but guts and instincts, he catches wind of a mysterious crew committing bank robberies and setting off bombs throughout the state of Washington. Husk soon joins forces with Jamie Bowen (Sheridan), a local cop with some connections to the gang, including a childhood friend they knock off in the film’s opening scene.
Kurzel switches viewpoints between the lawmen as they learn to work together, and the radical right group’s charismatic frontman, Bob Matthews (Hoult), who begins to build a powerful armed brotherhood in the northwestern wilderness. In a sense The Order tells two parallel stories, both of them about men so committed to a cause they’re willing to risk their lives for it, not to mention spell the ruin of their own families.
The mirroring between Husk and Matthews happens a few times, most notably in a hunting scene where Law’s character finds himself in the sights of Hoult’s rifle scope. But at that point he doesn’t yet know who Matthews is or what The Order’s plans are, and one of the film’s merits is the way it carefully follows how such investigations are handled in the real world. It’s often one step forward and several steps back, with Matthews and his gang managing to elude Husk’s grasp for nearly the entire movie.
The manhunt is peppered with a handful of explosive set-pieces, directed by Kurzel with his usual white-knuckle efficiency. One involves a simultaneous bombing and robbery that Husk tries to thwart, until the more inexperienced Bowen winds up getting in his way. Another is an armored car takedown that takes place on a road cutting through picturesque mountains and woods, whose silence is interrupted by sudden shotgun blasts that make you jump out of your seat.
Harmony Korine Puffs Cigar, Talks Inspiration for First-Person Shooter Art Film 'Baby Invasion': "You're Starting to See Hollywood Crumble Creatively"
There are few directors nowadays who can shoot scenes of violence with the kind of intensity and verisimilitude that Kurzel provides here. And yet the gunfire in The Order is never gratuitous, but shown to be ingrained in a certain version of American history — one fueled by the white rebellion myths of the 1978 neo-Nazi novel The Turner Diaries , which becomes a major clue in the investigation, as well as the preaching of Richard Butler (Victor Slezak) and his Aryan Nations far-right Christian movement.
Husk soon learns that Matthews’ The Order is an even more radically violent offshoot of the latter, and the film’s third act will eventually bring the two men face-to-face in a confrontation foreshadowing the FBI’s siege on Waco, Texas, almost a decade later. Even if it’s fairly predictable to see where things are headed by that point, knowing that they occurred in the U.S. only a short time ago — with onscreen titles providing actual dates and locations — lends a chilling and meaningful layer to the action.
In one of his better recent performances, Laws embodies Husk’s world-weary, addictive drive with plenty of charismatic stoicism. Gone is the British golden boy with the perfect smile, replaced here by a hard-drinking, handlebar-mustached federal agent who may already be past his prime — as evidenced by a sizeable chest scar following open heart surgery.
Sheridan provides the film’s one emotional hook as a cop who learns to be bad so he can do some good, compromising his family’s sanctity in order to take down Matthews and his gang. Smollett is also strong as an FBI officer who has Husk’s back but criticizes his failure to collaborate. And Hoult is altogether convincing as The Order’s fearless and reckless leader, staging daring robberies to fund what he believes is the only cause that matters.
The echoes between events in the film and what’s been happening in the U.S. since the 2016 presidential election are impossible to miss. And although DP Adam Arkapaw and production designer Karen Murphy’s uncanny recreations of ‘80s-era Washington are impressive to behold, there are moments when you start to wonder if the story is taking place then or now.
Narrating the action, in a minimal sense, is standup comic and podcaster Marc Maron, playing the Jewish talk show host Alan Berg, who was murdered by one of Matthews’ acolytes back in 1983. Berg’s refusal to accept the far-right rhetoric emerging around him would be his death sentence, and The Order leaves us questioning where we stand 40 years later, in an even more divided country that’s still armed to the teeth.
Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult Went to a Dark Place to Explore American Racism in Neo-Nazi Crime Thriller 'The Order'
Most Popular
Comments / 0